In all this open-air life, with its inseparable equality, one sees the embers of that old fire which once kindled the Italian heart in the days of their proud and glorious Republics. They are the descendants of those who, in the self-same spots, discussed the acts of Doges and Senates, haughty citizens of states, the haughtiest of all their age—and now—
Whether come by chance or detained by some accident, two English travellers were seated one evening in front of the Café Doney, at Florence, in contemplation of such a scene as this, listlessly smoking their cigars; they conversed occasionally, in that “staccato” style of conversation known to smokers.
One was an elderly, fine-looking man, of that hale and hearty stamp we like to think English; the young fellow at his side was so exactly his counterpart in lineament and feature that none could doubt them to be father and son. It is true that the snow-white hair of one was represented by a rich auburn in the other, and the quiet humor that lurked about the father's mouth was concealed in the son's by a handsome moustache, most carefully trimmed and curled.
The café behind them was empty, save at a single table, where sat a tall, gaunt, yellow-cheeked man, counting and recounting a number of coins the waiter had given him in change, and of whose value he seemed to entertain misgivings, as he held them up one by one to the light and examined them closely. In feature he was acute and penetrating, with a mixture of melancholy and intrepidity peculiarly characteristic; his hair was long, black, and wave-less, and fell heavily over the collar of his coat behind; his dress was a suit of coffee-colored brown—coat, waistcoat, and trousers; and even to his high-peaked conical hat the same tint extended. In age, he might have been anything from two-and-thirty to forty, or upwards.
Attracted by an extraordinary attempt of the stranger to express himself in Italian to the waiter, the young Englishman turned round, and then as quickly leaning down towards his father, said, in a subdued voice, “Only think; there he is again! The Yankee we met at Meurice's, at Spa, Ems, the Righi, Como, and Heaven knows where besides! There he is talking Italian, own brother to his French, and with the same success too!”
“Well, well, Charley,” said the other, good-humoredly, “it is not from an Englishman can come the sneer about such blunders. We make sad work of genders and declensions ourselves; and as for our American, I rather like him, and am not sorry to meet him again.”
“You surely cannot mean that. There's not a fault of his nation that he does not, in one shape or other, represent; and, in a word, he is a bore of the first water.”
“The accusation of boredom is one of those ugly confessions which ennui occasionally makes of its own inability to be interested. Now, for my part, the Yankee does not bore me. He is a sharp, shrewd man, always eager for information.”
“I 'd call him inquisitive,” broke in the younger.
“There's an honest earnestness, too, in his manner—a rough vigor—”
“That recalls stump-oratory, and that sledge-hammer school so popular 'down west.'”
“It is because he is intensely American that I like him, Charley. I heartily respect the honest zeal with which he tells you that there are no institutions, no country, no people to be compared with his own.”
“To me, the declaration is downright offensive; and I think there is a wide interval between prejudice and an enlightened patriotism. And when I hear an American claim for his nation a pre-eminence, not alone in courage, skill, and inventive genius, but in all the arts of civilization and refinement, I own I'm at a loss whether to laugh at or leave him.”
“Take my advice, Charley, don't do either; or, if you must do one of the two, better even the last than the first.”
Half stung by the tone of reproof in these words, and half angry with himself, perhaps, for his own petulance, the young man flung the end of his cigar away, and walked out into the street. Scarcely, however, had he done so when the subject of their brief controversy arose, and approached the Englishman, saying, with a drawling tone and nasal accent, “How is your health, stranger? I hope I see you pretty well?”
“Quite so, I thank you,” said the other cordially, as he moved a chair towards him.
“You've made a considerable tour of it [pronounced 'tower'] since we met, I reckon. You were bound to do Lombardy, and the silkworms, and the rice-fields, and the ancient cities, and the galleries, and such-like—and you 've done them?”
The Englishman bowed assent.
“Well, sir, so have I, and it don't pay. No, it don't! It's noways pleasing to a man with a right sense of human natur' to see a set of half-starved squalid loafers making a livin' out of old tombs and ruined churches, with lying stories about martyrs' thumb-nails and saints' shin-bones. That won't make a people, sir, will it?”
“But you must have seen a great deal to interest you, notwithstanding.”
“At Genoa, sir. I like Genoa—they 're a wide-awake, active set there. They 've got trade, sir, and they know it.”
“The city, I take it, is far more prosperous than pleasant, for strangers?”
“Well now, sir, that ere remark of yours strikes me as downright narrow, and, if I might be permitted, I 'd call it mean illiberal. Why should you or I object to people who prefer their own affairs to the pleasant task of amusing us?”
“Nay, I only meant to observe that one might find more agreeable companions than men intently immersed in money-getting.”
“Another error, and a downright English error too; for it's one of your national traits, stranger, always to abuse the very thing that you do best. What are you as a people but a hard-working, industrious, serious race, ever striving to do this a little cheaper, and that a little quicker, so as to beat the foreigner, and with all that you 'll stand up and say there ain't nothing on this universal globe to be compared to loafing!”
“I would hope that you have not heard this sentiment from an Englishman.”
“Not in them words, not exactly in them terms, but from the same platform, stranger. Why, when you want to exalt a man for any great service to the state, you ain't satisfied with making him a loafer—for a lord is just a loafer, and no more nor no less—but you make his son a loafer, and all his descendants forever. What would you say to a fellow that had a fast trotter, able to do his mile, on a fair road, in two forty-three, who, instead of keeping him in full working condition, and making him earn his penny, would just turn him out in a paddock to burst himself with clover, and the same with all his stock, for no other earthly reason than that they were the best blood and bone to be found anywhere? There ain't sense or reason in that, stranger, is there?”
“I don't think the parallel applies.”
“Maybe not, sir; but you have my meaning; perhaps I piled the metaphor too high; but as John Jacob Byles says, 'If the charge has hit you, it don't signify a red cent what the wadding was made of.'”
“I must say I think you are less than just in your estimate of our men of leisure,”